The name Pelasgians (, ) was used by Classical Greek writers to refer either to the predecessors of the Greeks, or to all the inhabitants of Greece before the emergence of the Greeks. In general, "Pelasgian" has come to mean more broadly all the indigenous inhabitants of the Aegean Sea region and their cultures, and British historian Peter Green comments on it as "a hold-all term for any ancient, primitive and presumably indigenous people in the Greek world".
In the Classic period, enclaves under that name survived in several locations of mainland Greece, Crete, and other regions of the Aegean. Populations identified as "Pelasgian" spoke a language or languages that at the time Greeks ambivalently identified as "barbarian", though some ancient writers nonetheless described the Pelasgians as Greeks. A tradition also survived that large parts of Greece had once been Pelasgian before being Hellenized. These parts fell largely, though far from exclusively, within the territory which by the 5th century BC was inhabited by those speakers of ancient Greek who were identified as Ionians and Aeolians.
Etymology Much like all other aspects of the "Pelasgians", their ethnonym (Pelasgoi) is of extremely uncertain provenance and etymology. Michael Sakellariou collects fifteen different etymologies proposed for it by philologists and linguists during the last two hundred years, though he admits that "most [...] are fanciful".
An ancient etymology based on mere similarity of sounds links pelasgos to pelargos , postulating that the Pelasgians were migrants like storks, possibly from Arcadia, where they nest. Aristophanes deals effectively with this etymology in his comedy The Birds. One of the laws of "the storks" in the satirical Cloud Cuckoo Land (), playing upon the Athenian belief that they were originally Pelasgians, is that grown-up storks must support their parents by migrating elsewhere and conducting warfare.
Gilbert Murray summarized the derivation from pelas gē , current at his time: "If Pelasgoi is connected with .
Julius Pokorny derived Pelasgoi from *pelag-skoi ; specifically, "inhabitants of the Thessalian plain". He details a previous derivation, which appears in English at least as early as William Ewart Gladstone's Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age; if the Pelasgians were not Indo-Europeans, the name in this derivation must have been assigned by the Hellenes. Ernest Klein argued that the ancient Greek word for , pelagos, and the Doric word plagos (which is flat), shared the same root, *plāk-, and that *pelag-skoi therefore meant , where the sea is flat.
Ancient literary evidence
Literary analysis has been ongoing since classical Greece, when the writers of those times read previous works on the subject. No definitive answers were ever forthcoming by this method; it rather served to better define the problems. The method perhaps reached a peak in the Victorian era when new methods of systematic comparison began to be applied in philology. Typical of the era is the study by William Ewart Gladstone, who was a trained classicist.. The Pelasgians are covered especially in Volume I. Unless further ancient texts come to light, advances on the subject cannot be made. Therefore the most likely source of progress regarding the Pelasgians continues to be archaeology and related sciences.
The term "Pelasgians" in ancient sources Ancient Greek authors used the term "Pelasgian" fluidly. Pelasgians could be presented as pre-Greek, non-Greek, semi-Greek, or Greek as a rhetorical device to advance a particular author's objective. Such objectives included uniting Greeks, distinguishing Greeks from foreign "barbarians", and establishing an imagined historical foundation for a shared cultural and political identity. There are no extant emic (self-identified) definitions of Pelasgian identity.
Poets Homer
In the Iliad, there were Pelasgians on both sides of the Trojan War. In the section known as the Catalogue of Trojans, they are mentioned between the Hellespontine cities and the Thracians of Southeastern Europe (i.e.,on the Hellespontine border of Thrace).Homer. Iliad, 2.840–2.843. The camp at Troy is mentioned in Iliad, 10.428–10.429. Homer calls their town or district "Larisa"Not the same as the Larissa in Thessaly, Greece. Many towns bearing the same (or similar) name existed. This specific "Larisa" seems to have been located in Asia. See: and characterises it as fertile, and its inhabitants as celebrated for their spearsmanship. He records their chiefs as Hippothous and Pylaeus, sons of Lethus, son of Teutamides.Homer. Iliad 2.806–12, 17.320–57 (transl. Robert Fitzgerald). See: The Iliad also refers to the camp at Greece, specifically at "Argos Pelasgikon",Homer. Iliad, 2.681–2.684. which is most likely to be the plain of Thessaly,The location is never explicitly given. Gladstone shows, by process of elimination, that it must be in the north of Thessaly. (.) and to "Pelasgic Zeus", living in and ruling over Dodona.Homer. Iliad, 16.233–16.235. Additionally, according to the Iliad, Pelasgians were camping out on the shore together with the following tribes:
Towards the sea lie the Carians and the Paeonians, with curved bows, and the Leleges and Caucones, and the goodly Pelasgi.Homer. Iliad, 10.428.
In the Odyssey, they appear among the inhabitants of Crete. Odysseus, affecting to be Cretan himself, instances Pelasgians among the tribes in the ninety cities of Crete, "language mixing with language side by side".Homer. Odyssey, 19.175–19.177 (Robert Fagles's translation). Last on his list, Homer distinguishes them from other ethnicities on the island: "Cretans proper", Achaeans, Cydonians (of the city of Cydonia/modern Chania), Dorians, and "noble Pelasgians".Homer. Odyssey, Book 19 (T. E. Lawrence's translation).
Hesiod Hesiod, in a fragment known from Strabo, calls Dodona, identified by reference to "the oak", the "seat of Pelasgians",Hesiod, fr. 319 M–W = Strabo. Geography, 7.7.10. thus explaining why Homer, in referring to Zeus as he ruled over Dodona, did not style him "Dodonic" but Pelasgic Zeus. He mentions also that Pelasgus (Greek: Πελασγός, the eponymous ancestor of the Pelasgians) was the father of King Lycaon of Arcadia.Hesiod. Catalogue of Women, fr. 161 = Strabo. Geography, 5.2.4
Asius of Samos Asius of Samos () describes Pelasgus as the first man, born of the earth. This account features centrally in the construction of an enduring autochthonous Arcadian identity into the Classical period. In a fragment quoted by Pausanias, Asius describes the foundational hero of the Greek ethnic groups as "godlike Pelasgus [whom the] black earth gave up".
Aeschylus Aeschylus incorporates all the territories that the Archaic tradition identifies as Pelasgian, including Thessaly (the region of Homer's Pelasgian Argos), Dodona (the seat of Homer's Pelasgian Zeus), and Arcadia (the region ruled by autochthonous Pelasgus's son Lycaon) into an Argive-Pelasgian kingdom ruled by Pelasgus. This affirms the ancient Greek origins of the Pelasgians as well as their widespread settlements throughout central Greece and the Peloponnese.
In Aeschylus's play, The Suppliants, the Danaids fleeing from Egypt seek asylum from King Pelasgus of Argos, which he says is on the Strymon, including Perrhaebia in the north, the Thessalian Dodona and the slopes of the Pindus mountains on the west and the shores of the sea on the east;Aeschylus. The Suppliants, Lines 249–259. that is, a territory including but somewhat larger than classical Pelasgiotis. The southern boundary is not mentioned; however, Apis is said to have come to Argos from Naupactus "across" (peras),Aeschylus. The Suppliants, Lines 262–263. implying that Argos includes all of east Greece from the north of Thessaly to the Peloponnesian Argos, where the Danaids are probably to be conceived as having landed. He claims to rule the Pelasgians and to be the "child of Palaichthon (or 'ancient earth') whom the earth brought forth".
The Danaids call the country the "Apian hills" and claim that it understands the karbana audanAeschylus. The Suppliants, Lines 128–129. (accusative case, and in the Dorian dialect), which many translate as "barbarian speech" but Karba (where the Karbanoi live) is in fact a non-Greek word. They claim to descend from ancestors in ancient Argos even though they are of a "dark race" (melanthes... genos).Aeschylus. The Suppliants, Lines 154–155. Pelasgus admits that the land was once called Apia but compares them to the women of Libya and Egypt and wants to know how they can be from Argos on which they cite descent from Io.Aeschylus. The Suppliants, Lines 279–281.
According to Strabo, Aeschylus's Suppliants defines the original homeland of the Pelasgians as the region around Mycenae.
Sophocles and Euripides Sophocles and Euripides affirm the Greek origins of the Pelasgians while highlighting their relationship to the Danaids, a relationship introduced and explored in depth in Aeschylus's Suppliants.
Sophocles presents Inachus, in a fragment of a missing play entitled Inachus, as the elder in the lands of Argos, the Heran hills and among the Tyrsenoi Pelasgoi, an unusual hyphenated noun construction, "Tyrsenians-Pelasgians". Interpretation is open, even though translators typically make a decision, but Tyrsenians may well be the ethnonym Tyrrhenoi.
Euripides uses the term for the inhabitants of Argos in his OrestesEuripides. Orestes, Lines 857 and 933. and The Phoenician Women.Euripides. The Phoenician Women, Line 107. In a lost play entitled Archelaus, he says that Danaus, on coming to reside in the city of Inachus (Argos), formulated a law whereby the Pelasgians were now to be called Danaans.
Ovid The Roman poet Ovid describes the Greeks of the Trojan War as Pelasgians in his Metamorphoses:Ovid. Metamorphoses, 12.1.
Historians Hecataeus of Miletus Hecataeus of Miletus in a fragment from Genealogiai states that the genos ("clan") descending from Deucalion ruled Thessaly and that it was called "Pelasgia" from king Pelasgus. A second fragment states that Pelasgus was the son of Zeus and Niobe and that his son Lycaon founded a dynasty of kings of Arcadia.
Acusilaus A fragment from the writings of Acusilaus asserts that the Peloponnesians were called "Pelasgians" after Pelasgus, a son of Zeus and Niobe.Mentioned in Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 2.1.
Hellanicus
Hellanicus of Lesbos concerns himself with one word in one line of the Iliad, "pasture-land of horses", applied to Argos in the Peloponnesus.Hellanicus fr. 36, Fowler, p. 173 (apud Scholia (T+) Iliad 3.75b); cf. Hellanicus fr. 7, Sturtz, pp. 49–51; Homer. Iliad, 3.75. According to Hellanicus, from Pelasgus and his wife Menippe came a line of kings: Phrastōr, Amyntōr, Teutamides and Nanas (kings of Pelasgiotis in Thessaly).Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities 1.28.3 (citing Hellanicus, Phoronis) = Hellanicus fr. 4, Fowler, pp. 156–157; cf. Hellanicus fr. 76, Sturtz, pp. 108–109. During Nanas's reign, the Pelasgians were driven out by the Greeks and departed for Italy. They landed at the mouth of the Po River, near the Etruscan city of Spina, then took the inland city "Crotona" (Κρότωνα), and from there colonized Tyrrhenia. The inference is that Hellanicus believed the Pelasgians of Thessaly (and indirectly of the Peloponnese) to have been the ancestors of the Etruscans.
Herodotus